


Links

by wneleh



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: BINGO!, College, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, NC State doesn't really have a Trek Studies department, plot stolen from Star Trek:TOS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 15:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4882096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wneleh/pseuds/wneleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sure, it’s kind of odd that Link’s waiting for him outside the gym, holding up a ten-speed that Rhett’s never seen before.  But Rhett’s feeling kind of down after his late evening shift taping the JV basketball game – he can’t shake the lingering feeling of longing for a path irrevocably abandoned – so when Link answers his, “Finished our Diffy Qs homework yet?” with “Screw that,” Rhett just shrugs and says “Okay, make me do my own math.  Don’t complain if the light’s still on at 3 a.m.“</p><p>- - - or - - -</p><p>Trek Studies has an endowed fund for catering transporter, AI, and holodeck-based emergencies.  This couldn't possibly be a good thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Links

**Author's Note:**

> I've stolen the plot from ST:TOS's _The Enemy Within_ , written by Richard Matheson. This completes a line on my H/C Bingo card, prompt 'unwanted transformation.'

At first, Rhett doesn’t realize anything’s wrong.

Sure, it’s kind of odd that Link’s waiting for him outside the gym, holding up a ten-speed that Rhett’s never seen before. But Rhett’s feeling kind of down after his late evening shift taping the JV basketball game – he can’t shake the lingering feeling of longing for a path irrevocably abandoned – so when Link answers his, “Finished our Diffy Qs homework yet?” with “Screw that,” Rhett just shrugs and says “Okay, make me do my own math. Don’t complain if the light’s still on at 3 a.m.“ 

Then Rhett peers a little more closely at Link, because, ‘Screw that’??? It’s not like Link’s never told him to fuck off before, but generally Rhett’s more than deserved it.

“You okay?” Rhett asks. 

The question seems to puzzle Link, and something about his expression makes the hairs on the back of Rhett’s neck rise.

“You hurt yourself or something?” Rhett asks. “You fall off the bike?” And then – finally – “Whose bike is that?”

“Dunno,” says Link. 

“Seriously?”

“It was lying on the ground by the dorm.”

Rhett takes a step forward. “You STOLE this bike?”

“I…” Link steps back, away from the bike, and it clatters to the ground. The sound seems to shake Link; he keeps backing up.

“No, hold up, I think you’re sick…” Rhett says, reaching for him, but too late and too slowly – Link has turned, and before Rhett realizes what’s happening, Link has darted left, behind a row of bushes, presumably heading toward the gym, but by the time Rhett reaches the path Link has disappeared.

Hopefully headed back to the dorm…

Well, at least Link had left him the bike. 

\- - - - - -

This was all his father’s fault, Rhett decides.

Go to NC State, his dad had insisted. Get a useful degree, in something you’ve got some aptitude in. Rub shoulders with the future leaders of North Carolina, or at least their lawyers and accountants.

The trouble was, when you got together thirty thousand of the state’s best and brightest, in a place that had both a “Star Trek Tech” major (a.k.a. Trek Studies) and a course called “Bio-Ethics Schmio-Ethics, If Man Can Do It God Thinks It’s Fine” – well, things were bound to happen.

Like, one night you might get back to your dorm room just minutes after leaving your roommate a mile away to find said roommate was already there, deep in the Differential Equations homework he’d just pretty much stated he wasn’t going to do (or at least wasn’t going to share). 

“Almost done,” Link says. “I’m spelling out the steps as carefully as I can; try to learn something when you copy it, okay? Or at least tell me you are.”

It seems that Link had gotten himself doubled. 

Rhett doesn’t realize he’s slid down the door and buried his head in his hands until Link is saying “Rhett, Rhett?” inches away.

 _This_ Link wouldn’t steal a bike. This is the Link who never gets below an A-, who never skips a class, the “Why can’t you be more like Charles Neal?” Link.

Grinder Link.

Rhett lets his hands fall. “How are you feeling? Tell me the truth.”

“How am _I_ feeling? I’m not the guy who just fainted.”

“Humor me.”

Link sits down – hard, Rhett thinks – next to him.

“Actually, I feel kind of odd,” Links says. “Maybe we’re both coming down with the same thing.”

Rhett sighs, putting his face back in his hands. “I know what you did this afternoon. You let those idiots in Trek Studies try out their transporter on you.”

“Well, you know they have a policy against experimenting on each other,” Link says. “Wimps. Anyhow, it was a blast! I went from the west wing of Roddenberry Hall to the east wing and back again!” He pauses. “How’d you know?”

“Because there are now two of you on campus.”

Rhett lowers his hands to see how Link reacts, and is disappointed. Link just looks a little worried, a little annoyed. “Well, that’s just great,” he says. “But I seriously don’t have time for this. I still have to do, like, twenty pages of economics reading.”

“I don’t think that’s your biggest problem right now,” says Rhett.

“No, my BIGGEST problem is that I have an English paper due next week and I haven’t even started the novel yet. Guh, why are we even talking??”

And Link is up and across the room and digging in his backpack for, presumably, said novel. Rhett pushes himself up as well. He’s got some calls to make.

\- - - - - -

Nobody’s answering the phone over in Trek Studies this late, and the few students he knows in the department aren’t picking up either. 

“Can you give it a rest?” Link asks. “I’m trying to read.”

Rhett ducks out and does a quick look through the dorm’s common spaces and the grounds right outside, but there’s no second Link lurking around. He considers calling Campus Police, but he’s got no evidence – maybe Link’s fingerprints on a bike he’s never touched, but the Link upstairs grinding through homework might just lie and say they were his so that he could get back to what he was doing.

Twenty minutes later, he’s back in his room; Link, unsurprisingly, is still working away.

Should he even call this guy – this _thing_ \- Link? Was the guy at the gym _more_ Link?

No, _that_ dude had stolen a ten-speed… _Actual_ Link, the guy he’d grown up with, wouldn’t even borrow a pair of scissors without leaving a note.

Rhett goes to the window, but all he sees is his own reflection. _Please find some place safe and warm to spend the night, buddy_ , he thinks. _We’ll fix this, I promise._

\- - - - - -

When Rhett gets up at 4 a.m. to use the john, Link is still at his desk, slumped over a Diffy Q’s problem set they haven’t even been assigned yet. 

Rhett shakes Link awake, then walk-carries him to bed. “Not done yet…” Link murmurs, but he doesn’t fight him.

This feels very, very wrong.

\- - - - - -

Rhett stays in bed sleepless, listening to Link breathing, trying to hear a difference, or a sameness, or – something. When the digital clock flashes 6:00, Rhett swings out of bed, throws on yesterday’s jeans and t-shirt, and bangs on RA Fred’s door. Spends five minutes trying to convince RA Fred that there are two Links around – at LEAST two Links – and it’s the “at least” which loses Fred. 

Finally Rhett gives up and grabs coffees and bagels from the mini-cafe in the basement, then brings them back up to the room. Link has woken up and is back at his desk, hair a mess, plowing through Rhett-has-no-clue. 

Link makes a face at Rhett’s very generous offering of breakfast, then taps on a small pile of papers. “Diffy Qs,” he says. “Get copying.”

“Not going to class,” Rhett replies. “I’m not doing ANYTHING until I figure out what’s up with you and, um, you.”

“Suit yourself,” says Link. “I’ve never felt so focused. I feel great…. I feel…”

And then Link’s swaying in his seat and letting his head sink down to his now-folded arms and breathing very, very carefully.

“Yeah, right,” says Rhett, moving behind him to give Link’s shoulders a few kneads. “Medical center, now.”

Link raises his head, looking genuinely fearful. “I can’t miss class!” he says. “I can’t.”

“Well, then get yourself there.”

“I will,” says Link, pushing back and rising to his feet. Immediately listing sideways, but righting himself. “I will.”

\- - - - -

Rhett tries every door to Roddenberry Hall, then plants himself on the stoop outside the main entrance. The wait’s not long, however, and soon he’s explaining to all sorts of people that something odd has happened to Link Neal, whom they all know well. Fortunately – and the relief is almost overwhelming – people believe him, and soon men and women with actual degrees are scribbling on white boards at each other and seem to be piecing together what happened. Suspicion falls on some metallic shavings on the denim jacket of the guy – a Mech Eng lab tech - who’d used the transporter right before Link. 

A grad student is dispatched to borrow a rat from “Experimental Bioethics”, and then Rhett and some other undergrads figure out how to encircle both a transporter pad and a target down the hall well enough to contain a rodent of uncertain talents and disposition without the enclosure itself being beamed. Duct tape and cardboard figure prominently.

Shortly before noon, they’re placing the rat on the pad; the creature disappears in a shimmer; someone yells that they’ve got him; and then another shimmer brings him back.

Rhett’s no expert on rat behavior, but what comes back seems different. It’s easier to get him back into his cage than it was to get him out of it, and then he backs into a corner and looks worried.

Nobody knows exactly how long the wait will be – it was at least ten minutes, those present the night before agree, between beaming Link around building and shutting everything down for the evening; and it’s impossible to know how long after that the second instantiation of Link appeared. 

The department brings in pizza – apparently there’s an endowed fund for catering transporter, AI, and holodeck-based emergencies – and Rhett’s eating his second slice of meat lovers supreme when there’s more shimmering in the vicinity of the transporter pad, and then there’s another rat scampering around the enclosure. This one is clearly different from the source rat (is that what they should call it?) and its twin/clone/first half. It’s hissing and squealing, and everyone decides to just let it be until it exhausts itself.

 _It_ , Rhett thinks. The source rat was a ‘he’, the first to appear was a ‘he’, but they’re all calling this one ‘it’. 

They’re discussing whether to try the leading idea for recombining the animals or to do more math at each other when word comes that the campus PD has picked up two versions of the same student. Link, of course. One of them had refused to leave a TA’s office in the economics building until he understood every single term in his book’s glossary; the other had liberated a skateboard and tried to navigate the stairs outside the library, somehow managing not to kill himself. 

It was, apparently, the policy of the PD to check with Trek Studies whenever any really weird shit was going down.

So pretty soon a couple of campus PD cruisers roll up. Grinder Link is helped from the first one, and Rhett’s about to go take the cop’s place as his support, but then the back door of the other cruiser opens and the other Link – No Bounds Link, Rhett dubs him - lunges out and falls to the ground: No Bounds is, ironically, bound at the wrists and ankles.

Grinder Link is looking at No Bounds Link with utter repulsion, which pisses Rhett off, so he heads to No Bounds and kneels beside him. 

Rhett kind of expects No Bounds to not recognize him – for him to be like some sort of wild animal, even though the night before he’d been not too, too far from normal – but No Bounds stills as soon as he sees Rhett. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he says – almost whimpers, which stabs Rhett in the heart – “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“There was an accident,” Rhett says. “We’re trying to fix things.”

“Who’s that guy?” No Bounds asks, meaning Grinder, who’s sitting on the steps of Roddenberry Hall not 15 feet away, glaring at them. “Why’s he dressed like I am? Why does he look like me?”

“That’s the other half of you,” says Rhett. “Like I said, accident. Damn transporter split you up. But the Trekkies think they can get you back together again.”

“Trekkers,” calls Grinder Link. “They prefer Trekkers.”

They unbind No Bounds and get both Links up and through the swishing automatic doors of Roddenberry Hall and into the transporter lab. The profs and grad students are now ready to try to recombine the rat, and Rhett finds himself seated between the two halves of his best friend.

He realizes that this might be the weirdest, most extraordinary moment of his, or anybody’s, life, ever. Take that, kids who got into Duke!

The transporter is activated, and the rats fade in and out; then there’s only one rat; and then he’s gone again; then he’s back, and solid.

And screaming his little rat lungs out, a horrible sound, the sound of rat death.

And then he’s lying on the transporter pad, horribly still.

The room is silent, broken only by some asshole’s “He’s dead, Jim.” Nobody laughs.

No Bounds Link is shaking so hard it’s moving Rhett’s chair; Grinder Link says, “I’m okay like I am.”

“No, you’re not okay,” says Rhett. “You’re totally not okay.”

No Bounds Link has pulled up his legs and buried his head in his knees. “No, no, no…”

“Listen,” says Rhett, “you aren’t a rat. Link Neal is a guy, a smart guy, a guy who will understand what’s happening.”

Though his component parts really hadn’t been exhibiting much self-awareness…

“And you don’t have a choice,” Rhett says. “You’ve got to see, this isn’t sustainable.”

Grinder Link sighs and rises and moves in front of No Bounds. “He’s right,” he says.

“Don’t ever tell Rhett he’s right,” No Bounds tells his knees. “That’s Rule One.”

Rhett wonders if he should be feeling insulted.

“Come on,” says Grinder, “Get up,” and No Bounds lets Grinder help him to his feet. They walk together onto the transporter pad; there’s enough room for them to stand side by side, but Grinder turns and hugs No Bounds tightly. 

“We can do this,” he says; then, to the room in general, “Do it now.”

Just like with the rat, it takes a few fade-outs, but then there’s only one person on the transporter pad; neither Grinder nor No Bounds, but Link. His Link.

Link strides off the pad and over to the white board. He stares at it for a few seconds, then says, “I’m going to need more math than Differential Equations, aren’t I?”

Rhett’s followed him over, and grabs his arm. “I am never, ever, ever letting you back in this building, do you understand me?”

Link pulls away and glares. “You are not now, and never will be, the boss of me, Rhett McLaughlin.” 

He turns away and Rhett thinks he might be about to completely lose it, and this is so not how this afternoon was supposed to go, so he steps close and pulls Link into a hug and says, “Okay, just, just… okay,” and Link says, “I knew you’d help me, I knew you’d figure it out,” and though Rhett had really done nothing other than get the ball rolling a few hours earlier than it might otherwise have, he nods and says, “Damn right.”

* * * THE END * * *

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be slash. It was also going to be about different types of friendship, and the human soul, and trust, and... well, that's not where the story went.


End file.
